Towards Understanding Player Experience between Classic and Unfair 2D Platform Video Games

Understanding player experience is not easy because it is complex, and multiple factors, such as game genres, mechanics, and difficulty settings can affect it. To investigate a part of player experience, a 2D platform video game was developed with two difficulty levels: classic, and a so-called unfair mode. There are four levels in both modes, and the goal is to safely reach the end of each. The player has to avoid patrolling enemies, visible and invisible spikes, fake blocks, and invisible blocks along the way. The player experiences of 52 participants were gathered using a questionnaire with multiple-choice questions and two 5-point Likert-scales. The results were investigated using the statistical program package R. They were grouped by age, gender, previous gaming experiences, whether players used the left side or the right side of the keyboard for this game, and how many hours they usually play per day. As was expected, unfair mode was found to be harder. However, when grouped by age, people between 18-25 years of age felt the largest increase in difficulty, while those over 33 felt the smallest. In case of gender, females felt larger difficulty increases than males. If the used controls were investigated, those who played with the arrow keys and space button (instead of A, D, and space buttons) felt that the game was significantly harder. For them, the jumping sections were more difficult to complete, and that resulted in making them angrier. Lastly, those who play more hours per day, or have played platformers or unfair games before were less susceptible to negative feelings than the others. The applicability and benefit of the results suggest that better understanding of player experience can contribute to the development of games with enhanced user experience and improved human-computer interaction.